Did you have a kid in your neighborhood who always hid so good, nobody could find him? We did. After a while we would give up on him and go off, leaving him to rot wherever he was. Sooner or later he would show up, all mad because we didn't keep looking for him. And we would get mad back because he wasn't playing the game the way it was supposed to be played.

There's hiding and there's finding, we'd say. And he'd say it was hide-and-seek, not hide-and-give-UP, and we'd all yell about who made the rules and who cared about who, anyway, and how we wouldn't play with him anymore if he didn't get it straight and who needed him anyhow, and things like that. Hide-and-seek-and-yell. No matter what, though, the next time he would hide too good again. He's probably still hidden somewhere, for all I know.

As I write this, the neighborhood game goes on, and there is a kid under a pile of leaves in the yard just under my window. He has been there a long time now, and everybody else is found and they are about to give up on him over at the base. I considered going out to the base and telling them where he is hiding. And I thought about setting the leaves on fire to drive him out. Finally, I just yelled, "GET FOUND, KID!" out the window. And scared him so bad he probably wet his pants and started crying and ran home to tell his mother. It's real hard to know how to be helpful sometimes.

A man I know found out last year he had terminal cancer. He was a doctor. And knew about dying, and he didn't want to make his family and friends suffer through that with him. So he kept his secret. And died. Everybody said how brave he was to bear his suffering in silence and not tell everybody, and so on and so forth. But privately his family and friends said how angry they were that he didn't need them, didn't trust their strength. And it hurt that he didn't say good-bye.

He hid too well. Getting found would have kept him in the game. Hide-and-seek, grown-up style. Wanting to hide. Needing to be sought. Confused about being found. "I don't want anyone to know." "What will people think?" "I don't want to bother anyone."

Better than hide-and-seek, I like the game called Sardines. In Sardines the person who is It goes and hides, and everybody goes looking for him. When you find him, you get in with him and hide there with him. Pretty soon everybody is hiding together, all stacked in a small space like puppies in a pile. And pretty soon somebody giggles and somebody laughs and everybody gets found.

Medieval theologians even described God in hide-and-seek terms, calling him Deus Absconditus. But me, I think old God is a Sardine player. And will be found the same way everybody gets found in Sardines - by the sound of laughter of those heaped together at the end.

"Olly-olly-oxen-free." The kids out in the street are hollering the cry that says "Come on in, wherever you are. It's a new game." And so say I. To all those who have hid too good. Get found, kid! Olly-olly-oxen-free.

— Robert Fulghum, "All I Really Need To Know I Learned In Kindergarten"

Spider - now aged six - has a same-aged cousin, THE BLACK WIDOW. this legendary child, also a friend of our children since the womb, is greatly admired for their imaginative nature. THE BLACK WIDOW had a spectacular career at nursery and has excelled further at school with such feats as “biting the teacher on the first day of school”, and “escaping school by simply walking out of it, throwing the entire school into a panic.”

My child Bug and THE BLACK WIDOW are not especially close, despite lifelong acquaintanceship and shared years of nursery; they go to different primary schools, and are diametrically opposing personalities. However, my child Mouse (aged 3) and THE BLACK WIDOW get along extremely well. Worryingly well. Despite being twice the age, two-and-a-half-times the size and possessing three times the wickedness of Mouse, THE BLACK WIDOW is tenderly gentle and attentive with Mouse. Perhaps because they are both the youngest of three.

THE BLACK WIDOW’s family came by and the adults lounged around gossiping while the four elder children amused themselves sensibly. Mouse and THE BLACK WIDOW set up a complicated coffee shop roleplay and demanded that the four adults queue up and place orders.

“Ask them what they want,” THE BLACK WIDOW prompted Mouse.

“It’s all poisoned,” Mouse said brightly.

“Don’t TELL them that,” THE BLACK WIDOW hissed.

They proceeded to serve us cups of coffee, told us it was poisoned after we had mimed drinking it, and we all had to fall about dying while they laughed like hyenas.

Tonight, Mouse laid dreamily in bed, having spent three delightful hours soaking up THE BLACK WIDOW’s undivided attention. “I love THE BLACK WIDOW,” they said blissfully.

“What do you love about them?”

“They push me in my pushchair,” Mouse said affectionately- (this is true, it gives me a fucking heart attack when THE WIDOW grabs the pushchair and charges around ramming people with Mouse.) “and,” Mouse went on, “I love poisoning and attacking people with them.”

“Yes,” I said, dubiously.

“I want to poison and attack people with them more. They said I can come to their house and poison and attack people -“

“I think you should go to bed,” I said.

“Mummy, when we are finished being friends, we are going to marry each other.”

“Oh wow,” I said, not even trying to unpack that progression, “that’ll be something to look forward to.”